• by Landon Moore • from the 2008 Sage Literary Magazine •

The bells in the church are wrong

Forgetting to forward spring

Computer sings twelve at one

Hallelujah technology.

 

The people here like the sound I guess

A learned melody

An hourly reminder

Of adult normalcy.

 

But I prefer the old messy clangs

Naïve childhood dreams

Before we were all disillusioned

By this modern Gethsemane.

 

Yesterday, I went to the church

Searching for History’s iron bell

What I found was an empty tower

No home for Emmanuel.

 

All I saw were plastic buttons

A keyboard of red, yellow, and green

To cue the mechanized music

That lies its faith to you and me.

 

And where is that naïve youth

Who swings hard on bell’s braided rope?

A ghost who haunts our memories

Flashing in momentary glimpses of hope.

 

This must be enlightenment

“I don’t believe in anything,” I say.

Hollow towers ring hollow truths

to victims of my age.